


Pearl

by apollos



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Angst, Borderline Personality Disorder, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Eating Disorders, Fatherhood, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Pining, Pre-Slash, Therapy, Touching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-06
Updated: 2019-11-06
Packaged: 2021-01-24 01:48:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21330256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apollos/pseuds/apollos
Summary: When Brian Jr. refers to Mac as his other father on a phone call, Dennis starts on a journey of painful self discovery.This story attempts to bridge the gaps of characterization between seasons 13 and 14.
Relationships: Mac McDonald/Dennis Reynolds
Comments: 24
Kudos: 184





	Pearl

Every Wednesday, Dennis slips out of the bar and goes to a diner a few streets away. Mac hates this diner, and for that matter Dennis does, too, but black coffee tastes the same everywhere. He sits in a booth in the back corner, windowless and grim. The call comes in at 6:20, 5:20 in North Dakota. He picks up on the fourth ring.

"Hey," he says, every time. "How was work?"

Mandy tells him about her assistant manager job at Applebee's and Dennis listens, pretends to care. He plays with a pack of Splenda while he talks to her, flips it back and forth, feels the granules between his fingers. He asks about Brian Jr. He gets updates on Brian Jr. A bright boy, generally, but what kid _isn't _bright? They're so young at that age, all their potential stored inside those tiny bodies. It drains as they grow. Dennis has high hopes for his son, like any father; he wants Brian Jr. to be brilliant in any and every way, he wants Brian Jr. to be happy. He does not speak to Brian Jr. on the phone. He hopes that Brian Jr. won't remember him, won't remember that year, when he grows up. He hopes he doesn't have to see the potential in his son's little body drain out and flow like rainwater in a street gutter.

He's back at the bar by 6:40.

"Where have you been?" Mac asks one Wednesday when Dennis slips back inside. Dennis curses; Mac isn't supposed to actually be checking IDs, he's supposed to be shooting the shit with the gang or off on a scheme. Frank, Charlie and Dee _are _seated at the bar, arguing about something as usual; something to do with the possibility of the powers of human flight, it sounds like.

"I had an errand to run," Dennis replies as soon as Mac asks the question. "It doesn't concern you."

"That's fine, man." Mac shrugs. "Just tell us when you're going out, so we know if we need you or something. Now, listen, we're planning something—"

The rest of the day passes by as usual.

"This is like Icarus," Dennis announces as he stands on the roof overlooking Paddy's back alley. Frank is putting wings on Charlie. Mac stands below, mattress at the ready and holding a camcorder. Dee squawks intermittently about how dangerous and stupid this whole thing is, and Dennis agrees.

"Ica-who?" Charlie turns around, to Frank's protests.

"Forget it," Dennis mumbles into the bottle of his beer.

"Suit yourself."

Humans cannot fly. They spend the evening in an emergency room. Dennis's absence gets smoothed over by the otherwise regularity of their lives.

Sometimes Dennis wonders if he wants Mac to notice and care that he's been gone. On Wednesdays, and generally. Sometimes Dennis feels Mac slipping. He tells himself to move past it, like he has all his life; he tells himself that it's natural to feel estranged from somebody when you've literally been estranged, gone for a year. Even if he's been back for a while, these things take time, and Mac's clearly been going through some shit. He still spends hours at a time alone in his room, but sometimes he's not alone—sometimes he brings home some guy. They all look the same, masses of muscles and buzz-cuts and straight noses. Mac tries to be discreet about it, but it's impossible; Dennis knows where he is at all times, knows that if he's not with Dennis he's trawling through some gay bar, finding some meat. That's what they are, those men. Thick slabs of meat hanging in a butcher shop, no personality, their existence determined by their eventual consumption. Dennis locks himself in his soundproofed room on those nights and still lays in his bed with his headphones in, listening to sappy music, trying to figure out what the fuck it is that he wants. (He wants Mac to notice and care that he was gone, that he's been gone, that he _is _gone.)

Hey guys, he says at the bar. Time to ask me about the time I've been gone. Surely, you're all burning to know. But they're not; they turn around. They leave Dennis on that stool. They leave Dennis thinking about leaving again. The difference that it ultimately would not make.

Time goes by in this fashion. They do their schemes. They fight, sometimes physically. They bleed and puke and shit and then they clean it all up again. Dennis wears his smiles and does his best.

"Other Dada?"

"What, buddy?" Dennis adjusts the phone and flips the Splenda packet. "Other Dada?"

"Other Dada," Brian Jr. confirms.

"I don't know what you mean, Brian. Can you put Mama back on the phone, please?"

Dennis hears some static and some crackling, and then Mandy's voice. Before she can speak, Dennis says, "What does he mean by that." There is no inflection of a question. He digs his fingers into the Splenda packet.

"I told him you left us for Mac," Mandy says. Dennis hears a bit of a bitter edge, but she still uses her usual cheery veneer of a voice. "Well, not that, exactly, you know? I told him in a way he'd understand, and that when's he old enough, I'll take him to visit his fathers."

Dennis throws the Splenda onto the table and it skids across the top and falls into the other side of the booth. He grabs a fistful of his own face, his nails digging into the skin on his cheekbones. "I did not leave you for Mac," he says, speaking quietly. "That's not what we agreed we were going to tell him. We weren't going to tell him anything!"

"Well, he asks about you. It's awful hard, Dennis. He sees other kids at the preschool with their dads."

Dennis groans. "Okay, fine. We can talk about that later. But I did not _leave you _for Mac. That is not what happened."

"Yeah, it is, Dennis." Her voice goes soft, too. The bitterness drains out. "You told me you couldn't do this anymore and you missed your old life. You talked about him the most."

"I did not."

"You did. Brian asks for an RPG, you talked about it so much."

Dennis feels a mixture of sick guilt and fatherly pride, not unfamiliar when it comes to Brian Jr. He shouldn't have broken his rule, but—Brian Jr. was sick today, and Mandy had stayed home, and he'd been sitting in her lap when he called and he'd heard Dennis's voice and Dennis heard him begging Mama for Dada, and. Dennis stays quiet, lessens his grip on his cheek. "He kept that," he mumbles. "The RPG."

"Of course he did, sweetie." She calls him sweetie, but she calls Brian Jr. sweetie; she calls everybody sweetie. It used to feel like a punch in the gut, like somebody calling Dennis by the wrong name even after he told them again and again what he wanted to be called. The distance softens that, but still Dennis hates it, hates that he ever put himself in that position to begin with. "He loves you."

"He loves me," Dennis repeats. "Sure. Always knew that. It doesn't mean I _left you _for him. We agreed to an amicable split for both ours and Brian's sake, and I, of course, moved back home. There was nothing in North Dakota for me."

"What's in Philadelphia for you?"

Dennis looks around at the diner. The people who eat here are the same people who drink at the bar—a dying generation of men with yellow eyes and gravel-caked work boots, with thick accents and scraggly beards. Rough-and-tumble sorts. Not that Dennis's generation, and the generation below him, of Philadelphians _aren't _rough-and-tumble, but it's a different type of grit. A more international sense of disillusionment. One of the florescent lights is broken. The woman behind the counter is old and fat, with over-curled hair and a smoker's rattle in her throat. Dennis hates this place. Dennis does not hate Philadelphia.

Philadelphia is grimy and gritty and rough-and-tumble, and Dennis has been mugged and Dennis has been called _fag _on street corners (him and Mac both), and more people have rear-ended him than he can count, and the heating goes out in their apartment all the time in the dead of winter, and the snow gets so ugly, gray and dirty and clumped along the gutters. Their bar barely keeps itself afloat with Frank's money. Dee's annoying, Charlie's stupid, Frank's a nuisance at best. Mac's clingy and codependent and always in Dennis's space, giving him the puppy-dog eyes, touching Dennis's arm, peeling his apples for him, cutting them up and sprinkling brown sugar on them and putting them on top of Dennis's oatmeal, and some days that's all that Dennis eats because then at least Mac won't say anything.

When he tried to do that for himself and Brian Jr. one Sunday morning in North Dakota his hand shook and the knife slid, cutting into the tender part between Dennis's finger and thumb. Blood poured. Brian cried. Mandy was at work. Dennis buckled Brian into his car seat and drove himself to the E.R., in the cheap truck Mandy's father had loaned him, with one hand, a dishrag wrapped around the other. The only stations he could get were country music, so he left the radio off, Brian's wailing and Dennis's cursing filling in the air. Sitting in the E.R. with Brian clinging teary-eyed around his neck, Dennis never felt like more of a failure, a pathetic human being, as he did in that moment. In the end he needed six stitches and they had to give Brian something to calm him down, and the oatmeal and the apples curdled on top of the counter, made the whole kitchen smell sickly sourly sweet when they got home.

"Philadelphia is my home," Dennis repeats. "You don't understand."

"I don't," Mandy agrees. "I don't understand while a whole city riots when their team wins, no matter what team it was and if they watched it or not." Her cow-toned accent comes out, makes the word _watched _sound like _wotched_, consonants dripping off her words like rotten honey. Dennis cringes at the sound, thinks of all the sweet things she'd try to say during sex in the first few months when they still made an attempt at sharing the same bed, when they still made an attempt at having sex. "But I understand you a little, Dennis, you know. I understood you loved him. I know you don't love me, but I think you love Brian. If you want, you can see him again. But I gotta know that I'm sending him to a good home and that you haven't made a liar out of me when you do."

"Look, Mandy. I've humored you long enough. I am going to hang up, and I am going to call back next Wednesday, and we are _not going to talk about this then, _or _ever again. _Brian is never going to visit me. I am not with Mac. Understand?" He interrupts the low pitch of whatever inane thing she was about to say as he mashes the screen, cutting the line.

He sits in the diner for longer than necessary. Long enough to draw suspicion back at the bar. So he doesn't go to the bar. He just goes home.

_Home._

He thought that his apartment might smell different to him when he returned from North Dakota. That he would lose the ignorance one attains to the reality of their own place. He never stopped smelling the coconut-scented hand soap Mandy used, or the lingering dry trace of carpet cleaning, or Brian's milky baby undertones. It drove him crazy, sometimes, the same way that the water heater from their little rendezvous in the suburbs drove him crazy—the constant lingering of it. Never a neutral space, never comfortable, never _quite _learning where Mandy kept the mop bucket or the serving plates. Never home. An overlong visitor.

The feeling worsened when he moved from Mandy's bed to the small guest bedroom, which was really more of a glorified closet. He slept cramped and contorted in a tiny daybed next to the sole bookshelf in the house stocked with Danielle Steel and self-help books. He waited, and he waited some more. Nothing big happened. Nobody accused him of cheating on them by spending too much time at Applebee's, or whatever. Nobody bet on how long he would make it. He just woke up one day, his eyes crusted with poor sleep and the sun in his vision from the awful angle of the window in that terrible room, and he felt sick to his stomach with how much he _hated _his life there. It was a Thursday morning. His alarm for work—he was working for a company doing travelling inventory checks, boring and stupid shit, a normal 9-to-5—woke him up. His back hurt as he walked to the bathroom and took a piss. He stared in the mirror, he took a few deep breaths, and then he went to Mandy's room.

She was still asleep; she didn't switch her shift at Applebee's until after Dennis left. During his time there she worked the night shift, so she could watch Brian Jr. in the day, and then Dennis would have him once she left. It worked. They spent little time together except for the painful, tedious, mandatory family weekends, and even then, Mandy worked half of those a month. Her parents would take Brian Jr. sometimes and Dennis lied and said he was in a bowling league with some guys from work, when really, he'd drive two hours to go sit in some other town's bar with some other town's sad men.

There were no Irish bars in North Dakota. There were no large Catholic churches with their endless rows of pews and constant hum of the psalms and men too handsome to become priests becoming priests anyway. There were plenty of gullible rubes, potential marks, but Dennis couldn't imagine saying to Steve, the guy whom Dennis pretended to like at work, _hey, you want to go scam some people by selling gasoline to them? You're gonna have to siphon it with your mouth, buddy_. _Can you do a fireball? Do you want to fake your death? Do you want to_ _run for office? Do you want to hold a funeral for a baby that never actually existed? Do you want to make a fake sequel to our favorite movie? _Steve liked to watch blockbuster comedies, chew tobacco and play some godawful game known as cornhole. Steve made fun of Dennis when he wore button-up shirts outside of work and gelled his hair. At one point Steve saw the compact left thoughtlessly in a cupholder in Mandy's dad's truck, while they were on the way to Steve's son's Little League game, Dennis driving so Steve could drink, and Steve said, "Women, huh? Always leaving this shit everywhere," and Dennis set his jaw and thought about pulling over and shoving Steve into one of the sunflower fields. The flowers were tall enough, they could hide his body. Instead, Dennis started to sweat under his collar and said, ha, yeah, I'm always telling Mandy, but she's so forgetful, you know? And Steve said, yeah, I get it, Lisa's the same way, and then they went and watched Carson, Steve's son, win his game, while Dennis smoked cigarettes and drank beer and made sure not to dangle his wrists over his thighs.

The morning he left, Dennis stood in the door of Mandy's room and looked at her. Mandy lived in a dreadful house; though property was cheap in North Dakota, it was dated, both weirdly spacious and too cramped, rooms folding in on each other like an optical illusion, and all the furniture was from different decades and different styles, drawn into these labyrinthine rooms with no artfulness whatsoever. Mandy had purple sheets on her bed that tangled easily. She slept on her side with an eye mask and a comforter patterned with tulips.

"Mandy."

Mandy woke, sniffed—she had awful allergies, snored in her sleep—and sat up. "Dennis?" she said, lifting her eye mask up. "Is something wrong?"

"I'm leaving."

Dennis turned around, then, and he left.

It was as simple of a process as it could be. He hadn't amassed much in North Dakota, just a new pair of boots for the winter and what he had gotten for Christmas from Mandy and her family. He left all their gifts and took the boots with him. He packed his suitcase and left without saying goodbye to Brian. They agreed it was for the best, Mandy and him, talking quietly in the kitchen. They didn't want to confuse him. He might forget about Dennis altogether, a man regulated to hidden pictures in a book and stories for when he got older.

He took a cab to the airport and texted his boss on the way there, saying he was quitting. His boss was angry, of course, but Dennis couldn't give less of a fuck. He was thinking about having to change all his documentation from Nowhere, North Dakota to Philly again. He checked his bank account and saw there was enough for a ticket. If there hadn't been, he would have just hit up Frank for money, but at least he was saved from _that _potential embarrassment. It would make a more dramatic entrance back home, too, Dennis already thinking about the celebratory reception he was surely about to encounter, like Jesus risen from the tomb.

On short notice, he ended up on a flight that was too long with odd layovers, and he still had to wait a few hours, but it was better than nothing. He sat in the airport's Starbucks and drank a venti black coffee, watching the type of people who came and went from North Dakota. He was the type of person that came and went to North Dakota. He vowed he would never come back to this place again.

What drove him to set the weekly calls up with Mandy is that the knowledge of Brian Jr. walking around out there, carrying half of Dennis's DNA, bothers him. He's sure he has other bastard children somewhere. Condoms are fallible and women lie. But he can live in ignorance of these possible children, regulated to thought experiments and musings. He cannot live in ignorance of Brian Jr., whom he has held and talked to and fed and nurtured, even if he failed, even if it was for such a short time. He may have been conceived under false pretenses, a junior to a man who no longer exists if he ever really did, but the kid is his son. He did the paternity test. Brian Jr. has his hair and eye color. He walks the same way Dennis does. He dangles his wrists.

There was no reason to lie to Mandy about his reasons. He hates her, but in the abstract way that he hates nearly everybody, a block of disgust so normal Dennis knows how to work around it. Like walking around with ankle weights, your body becomes accustomed. He made it very clear to her: I do not love you, I do not want to be in your life, this is about the kid. She accepted that, because she _does _love Brian Jr., loves him in a way that Dennis wishes he were capable of, unconditionally and truly and deeply. It's the twenty-first century. People make unconventional families work.

Dennis shakes as he sits on the couch. When he came back from North Dakota, he and Mac ceased their check-ups, so Dennis knows he has more time to work with, here. The freedom feels suffocating.

Maybe Brian Jr. remembers Mac on some level. Dennis had taken a handful of child psychology classes in college, though he'd fucked around and not paid that much attention. He knows that babies form memories, memories that you cannot access later in life but shape your brain and your soul—whatever a soul _is_—nonetheless. It would be natural for Brian Jr. to assume that the other man he met was his other father. Unconventional families; a child's idea of family can be fluid, apart from the mother-figure. Maybe it makes sense to Brian Jr. that he somehow has two dads. That his father is both his father and not his father.

_You are your father's child_, Dennis realizes. _Frank. Not Bruce. _Bruce gave Dennis the DNA, gave him the good looks and the height and the smooth voice, but Frank _shaped _him. Was there in those nebulous gray matter years of enrichment and education, lullabies and flash cards. Even if he was gone frequently, an absence is as much of a presence as not.

Dennis sits on the couch and he flips these facts and ideas and philosophies and theories over and over in his head until it starts to hurt, until the sun sets, until he hears Mac shoving the keys in the lock—all the years they've lived here and Mac _still _always puts the keys in wrong the first time—and sees Mac in front of him, waving his hand in front of his face.

"Dennis!" Mac exclaims. The lack of fat in his face, cut away by all that new muscle, somehow makes him even more expressive. Wide eyes and wrinkled forehead, concern. "Where _were _you? We called you, like, a million times, dude!"

"I have a headache," Dennis responds. "I had a headache. That's why I came home."

"You should have told somebody."

"Why?" Dennis rises from the couch. "What does it matter, if I'm here or gone?"

Mac's mouth falls open. His jaw twitches and his tongue dances as he starts and ends words and sentences. Dennis goes to his room, leave him to catch flies alone.

What to do, what to do. Dennis has made his move. He cannot turn around and say to Mac, hey, man, did you miss me? I know you missed me, but did you _miss _me? Dennis himself isn't even sure of the distinction. He wants to know why Mac didn't want to know. There was that sex doll, but even that was Dennis on only the most superficial level. It means next to nothing if Mac fucked the thing. The same as Brian LeFevre: the projection of a man onto something else, a breakable illusion, the film reel playing as much on your hand when you wave it in front of the camera as on the wall.

If that is true, then—

Brian Jr.'s existence is a lie. He is the second of a man who does not exist. He is Dennis's son; he is not Dennis's son. Flesh and blood are limits which contain the soul, whatever the soul is, if the soul exists at all, and Dennis tries to pretend it doesn't, but the thing is, Dennis believes it in _fervently_. The alternative is too sad, too bleak. That all the world is comprised of communistic sheep, not individual beings. For Dennis to believe himself superior, he can't believe himself to be the only one to attain consciousness; he has to believe his own consciousness is somehow _special _when compared to others. There is no joy in ruling over the unthinking and unfeeling. There was no joy in North Dakota.

People in North Dakota thought and felt, of course. Their trials and tribulations were real to them. Steve's screams at his son's Little League games were as strong and as jubilant as those of peasants freed from revolt. The thing is that experience is relative. The thing is that in North Dakota, people only started locking their doors maybe in the last twenty years and only when the media started telling them to. People did a lot of meth in North Dakota, but the junkies weren't prone to mugging you and pissing on your body afterwards. They were mostly skinny kids who'd dropped out of high school and got tired of shoveling cow shit. Dirty without being gritty, broken without the scars to prove it. It was real, sure, but a projection on a wall—fake—another man's life. To wear his skin might be exciting for a moment, for the thrill and the scheme, but when the scheme becomes real and Dennis could not distinguish the lines anymore—too much. That made him hate his own traitorous guts.

The second part of this line of thinking, the part that Dennis wants to jettison from his mind as quickly as it comes to him, is that, even if Philly is _authentic _to him in a way he cannot quite put words to, he himself isn't. He doesn't matter. His long-denied soul-stuff is not unique. There is nothing in him that sets him apart from the crowd. He's handsome, sure, but a sex doll achieves the same end. A sex doll gets Mac off. The Waitress, too, from what he's heard, but he could not care less about the Waitress. About Mac, though—it's just that that doesn't make any _sense_. Dennis is the most important person in Mac's life. Dennis surpasses Mac's mother and father and probably God, at the end of the day. That should be enough. Dennis left Mac the mental health line as an act of kindness, to both Mac and himself, and it the end it didn't make a damn lick of difference, because Mac doesn't _care_. Mac learned he couldn't fuck the flesh-and-blood Dennis, the one with something inside of him besides silicone and Mac's own come, and Mac left.

Yes: Mac left. He still lives here, he's still around, he hasn't set a foot outside of Philly or gotten a driver's license in a different state, but he left Dennis all the same.

The others, he could expect it from. It was a little bit of a blow that his own sister and father didn't give a damn what he was up to, but then again, he'd talked to them a handful of times. He'd called Dee on their birthday and Christmas. As far as Charlie goes, it's not in his nature to pry. Charlie understands, sometimes on a level so intuitive and subtle it shocks Dennis to his core. An empath, Dennis thinks on occasion. That makes Charlie the most dangerous of all, too, in a way. (That makes Charlie _special_.)

But to Mac, Dennis thought there was something _special _and _unique _to the whole thing, _their_ whole thing, something pure in a sea of filth, maybe, pure like a pearl in a clam at the bottom of the sea, and much in the same manner, protected and unnoticed. Dennis had no desire to break the shell and show that thing to the clean light of life. He liked the grungy exterior of the clam, ugly and unspecial, nothing belying the importance and opulence of that which it hid. But the damn shell broke anyway, a death by a thousand cuts—_our house, Mac? Why is it our house?_—_I'm gay_—_I think I'm going to go, yeah—_and it wasn't a pearl after all. It was a dud. It was a shell built over nothing.

It wasn't nothing. It was something. Something special. Dennis was something special to Mac. He thought he was, because he felt it, too. He felt Mac as something special to _him_.

Mac is clingy and codependent and overbearing and always in his space, but Dennis likes those things, too. He liked the check-ins and the peeled apples. He liked Mac there to catch him when he fell. The world _was _a safer place when he was around, because the world was their world and in their world Mac didn't judge Dennis, he adored him, warts and all, no makeup, literal or not, nothing but the raw, ugly little knot of Dennis's soul, bared on their couch as they did whatever they did, together. Mac's smiles are crooked and he throws his weight around like the world is his, so lacking of self-conscious Dennis can't decide if he's jealous or finds it objectively attractive. Mac's ride or die, Mac's always down for the scheme, Mac's there beside him, because it's more fun when he's there, because it's safer. They broke up once, they came back together. They broke up again, and this time, they remain broken.

Laying there on his bed, his hands crossed over his chest, staring at the ceiling, Dennis feels how much it hurts to be left.

The pain is immediate and all-consuming. Like being set on fire from the inside out. His heart and his stomach and his muscles spasm, his joints fill with lava, his skin tries to split himself open. He stuffs his blanket in his mouth so to stifle the sobs, not from the outside world to himself, because even in this moment he cannot handle his own vulnerability. Fat tears, more salt than liquid, break from his eyes, coming from a well somewhere deep, deep in his belly. He feels it, he feels the fullness.

_I have big feelings, and it hurts_, he'd said, and he fucking _meant _it, but all the same he put that RPG and he put his feelings right back into that box. He could blame it on his leaving, but he'd made the decision before he made the decision to leave. They were the same decision, made by the same man, to the same end; his whole life has been this same decision. The D.E.N.N.I.S. system is more than just a way to trick women into sleeping with him. It's a way to live his entire life. Separate entirely.

He failed, though. He did not separate entirely. And it hurts, by God, does it hurt, his body lashing like there's a demon inside of him and he's performing the exorcism himself, holy water on his burning skin, sick to his stomach with how much he _hates _it, and unlike when he turned his back on North Dakota, there's nowhere and no way to go. This is, on all levels literal and cosmic, his bed, the one that he made, the one that he must lay in.

In the morning he feels ridiculous for his crisis having been prompted by Brian Jr. calling Mac _Other Dada_. He wakes early, of course, after a long and fitful night's sleep. His own living room and kitchen scare him, the idea of Mac lurking there and living his life so normally and without Dennis, so Dennis just pads into his own bathroom. He looks at himself in the mirror. He feels ridiculous for it being prompted by a child's innocent misunderstanding, and he feels ridiculous for labelling it as a child's innocent misunderstanding.

Get a grip, he tells himself. Fucking move past it. Bring yourself together.

(But he's failed, again and again, to do so. He left and he came back. He hasn't slept with a woman in so long. He's put up the usual bravado and farce but it's wearing thin, weathered by the years and a series of decisions Dennis made with such strong belief that this is how he should live his life. The wrong decisions, he may be coming to realize.)

Finally, after a careful hour of applying the makeup so that it looks like he's not wearing makeup at all, of feeling every wrinkle and sag and then watching them disappear in the mirror, of the ritualistic unpackaging of his favorite products and the ritualistic entombing of those products back into their boxes, it is time to go to work. Dennis walks out of his room and into the world.

"Hey bro," Mac says from his place at their table where he's watching some video on his phone, propped against their saltshaker.

"Go fuck yourself."

The world feels brighter and louder, and not in a good way. Dennis likes the dull gray of Philly, see, the lack of sun and the ugly buildings crowding together like too many teeth in a mouth and the awful lighting in their bar. He does not want to feel attuned to the way the sun shifts behind the clouds, or the slightest movements of Mac's body.

The good thing is, Mac's easy to read. The good thing is, he can hide behind Mac's obliviousness. Mac means what he says and does what he means. Mac is earnest, so earnest, and Mac wears his heart on his sleeve. There is no guessing with Mac. This is one of the things that makes Mac _Mac_, that fill the hole of his soul, and that set him apart from everybody else. When Mac is nice, Mac is nice. When Mac is mean, Mac is mean. It's easy to blame it on him being dumb and self-deluded, and he _is _dumb and he _is _self-deluded, but, as Dennis is learning, it is possible to be two things at once. Dumbness and self-delusion never let Mac don the armor Dennis has, and in turn, has left that raw and vulnerable heart open for all to see, and by God, is Mac's heart large and raw and vulnerable.

All that said, Mac is still very much dumb and delusional and oblivious, so Dennis can hide this new pain from him, even if he can no longer hide it from himself. He keeps himself primed to analyze everything that Mac does, knowing that what he's seeing is the truth. Mac makes a few comments here and there about Dennis and his body, but that's nothing unusual. Dennis waits for the touches and the closeness and the lingering togetherness, like they had shared before Dennis had left (_before Mac had come out_, but again, at the end of the day—it's the same decision Dennis made and kept making.) Nothing comes.

Tuesday, before Dennis's next call with Mandy, Dennis tries to start a conversation with Mac after they watch their movie. "Hey," he says, pulling his knees to his chest from his end of the couch, not realizing he's doing it. "Do you really not want to know what happened in North Dakota?"

Mac turns from the credits of _The Empire Strikes Back_ and shrugs. "Nah."

"Why not?"

Mac looks between Dennis and the movie, playing with the hem of his shirt. "'Cause you came back."

"But you're not _curious_? Not even a little bit?" Dennis wants to unfurl his body and prod Mac, maybe poke his socked foot into his thigh or lean forward and shove his shoulder. Any of those things they would have done before, unquestionably, to the point where the feel of Mac's skin became as familiar as his own. But Mac came out and Dennis made the same decision over and over again, and now there exists a distance between them that might as well be a wall.

"What does it matter?" Mac asks. "Nothing changed, you know?"

"I do not know." Dennis scowls. "What do you mean, nothing changed?"

"Let's see." Mac starts counting things off his fingers. "You didn't get married to her, you didn't bring the kid back, you didn't die, you came back, so—nothing changed. It's like you weren't even gone."

"Really?" Dennis drops his knees from his chest. A swift current of anger and pain, mixed together and as toxic as a sewer surge, rushes through his chest. "It's like I was _never even gone_?"

"Yeah, man. Same as it ever was."

"You absolute fucking idiot!" Dennis screams. Mac's eyes go wide. "Yeah, sure, I'm back, but what did you _think _I did while I was gone, huh? Really? What did you guys think? Think I went to North Dakota and just hung out in bars and fucked chicks and got drunk every day like I do here? No. I worked a nine to five, Mac! I lived in the _suburbs_! I tried to be a fucking father!" He rises from the couch, ignores Mac's placating _Dennis_. "And you're right. I didn't get married to her. I didn't bring the kid back. I didn't die. I did come back. But if you think nothing changed—fucking _think _about it, Mac, use whatever braincells you have left from all the steroids and the drugs and booze and shit. How could it not change?"

"You didn't seem different," Mac says. He seems so small, even though he's so strong, now, huddled up in a corner of their couch, lights from the movie blinking across his face. The Star Wars credit music plays, and Dennis feels that he has departed Earth, and not by his own will this time.

"Oh, I didn't _seem _different? You've known me for over twenty years, Mac, don't you _know _by now that I seem how I want to seem? Are you that stupid? Are you, really? Do you not know me at all? Jesus Christ. Jesus fucking Christ. I cannot handle you."

Dennis slams his way back into his room, locking the door behind him and shaking from the very top of his head down to the very tip of his toes. He can see it, can see his fingers vibrating in front of his face. Yelling at Mac might well have been yelling at himself. He's not mad at Mac for not being able to read his mind—or maybe he is, a little bit, he meant the things about knowing him, and what he really meant was about this feeling of being left behind—but mad at himself for putting himself in a position where reading his mind would be necessary. He can't expect Mac to see things that Dennis hides, he really can't, and on some level, he knows that, but on every other he wants Mac to be able to, anyway.

Because, in a way, maybe, Mac _used _to. They used to work. They used to fall into their little codependent rituals and live off them, a symbiosis, and it was alright. They had each other, and it was alright, and it was okay because they still banged chicks, even if every year they signed their lease again and understood that neither of them were going anywhere. They had separate bedrooms.

But: Mac came out and stopped banging chicks.

But: they moved back in and Mac made the (_not entirely unreasonable_) assumption that they would share the bedroom.

But: Dennis signed the lease, sure, but he left the apartment and changed his address.  
So, yes, Dennis thinks, he can be mad at Mac for not seeing how this would change things for Dennis. He can scream until he goes hoarse. He's done it in the past. He'll do it again. He can scratch at Mac until he bleeds for doing the wrong things, or the right things but in a way Dennis doesn't like them done. He's done it in the past. He'll do it again. He can do that, and he can feel justified when he does it when everything's running smoothly, and Mac still isn't getting it for some reason.

Things are not running smoothly, now, though.

He can scream until he goes hoarse and draw Mac's blood until he dies on the floor but it doesn't change the fact that Dennis made the decision to cut the red string between them, not Mac.

For everybody could see it: Brian Jr.'s little voice on the phone, _Other Dada_, and the way Mandy was quick to accept them as a couple the first _and _last time she saw Dennis, whether Mac was present or not. Dee and Charlie and Frank, they all see it. People on the street probably see it. Surely they do, if they throw slurs at them. Mac and Dennis are a pair sold together, whatever that may mean, and Dennis was fine with it until the reality set in. Comfortable ignorance, yanked from him, and he's left screaming and crying like a child with watching their balloon float off into the sky.

"I want to talk to you about something," Dennis says at 5:21 P.M. the next day. It had been a long, hard day up until now; standoffish with Mac, irritated by everybody's usual willful ambivalence, anxious about the decision to talk to Mandy.

"Yeah?" Mandy says.

Dennis sighs. "It's about last week. Now, I know I said I would forbid any mention of that conversation. However, it's causing me—problems—that I don't want."

"Okay," Mandy says, sounding confused.

"Do you think Mac loves me?"

Mandy laughs, but then tries to stifle it. Dennis glares at empty air in front of him, his fingers inching across the Formica to find a Splenda packet. He wonders if it's the same one from every week. The people here don't seem like they put Splenda in their coffee. "_Sweetie_," she says. "Of course he loves you! He wanted to be a dad with you. That's when you know you really love somebody, when you wanna take care of something together."

Dennis sighs. "I suppose."

"What's bringing this on? I know you said last week, but—"

"Look, Mandy. I am only talking to you about this because I don't like you, okay? I don't like you. I don't like North Dakota. I didn't like being a father. If I never called you again, this whole thing would be out of my life."

"I know that."

"Right. However, I will say that you are probably one of the only people I have met in my life who seems to be able to love people unconditionally. Now, believe me, Mandy, I think that's a pretty stupid fucking thing. This world is cruel. People are cruel. People are conditional. Life is conditional. There's no fairy tale happy bullshit at the end, okay? Heaven isn't real. You believe in it, though. Mac does too. Mac knows how much deplorable people are, though. Inside. There's only so much you can do to cover it up, but inside? People are ugly, Mandy. Ugly, rotten, and cruel." Dennis shifts in his seat. He's getting off track and his face is heating up.

"You know I don't agree with you on all that," Mandy says.

Dennis rolls his eyes and drops his voice. "Which is why I'm _talking to you about it_, Mandy," he hisses into the phone, covering it with his hand.

"I just don't know what you're talking about!"

"They didn't care when I came back," Dennis says, finally. "Does that make you happy? To know that this city—these people—don't give a fuck whether I'm there or not? Mac included, Mandy. Mac included."

"That doesn't make me happy." Mandy sighs. "That makes me awful sad, in fact. Because that's part of the reason me and Brian Jr. let you go. I really thought you'd be happier back there, with those people, because I think that's where you belong. I'm not sayin' that to be mean."

"Yes, well." Dennis clears his throat. "That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is—why they would stop caring, I guess."

"You mean Mac."

"I mean everybody."

"No, Dennis." Mandy's voice takes that authoritative tone on, the one that Dennis had called her for but will still resent, nonetheless. "You mean Mac. And you want to know why?"

"No, I don't, actually."

"Because you talked to your sister every once and a while, and I thought that was nice. Even if she seems pretty awful. You're pretty awful yourself, you know. I don't think you are deep down like you do, but I don't think I've ever met somebody who _tries _to be as awful as you are. Most people who are mean don't know they're bein' mean, but you do. And I know you don't really like your dad that much, so I don't think it bothered you. And your friend Charlie, well, I get the impression that he's fine with you being back, and you're fine with that, because you guys always seemed like you kind of understood each other pretty well. Mac is different, though. He really means something to you. Because you talked about him the most but you always did with this kind of—kind of—disguise, I guess, you know? Like you didn't care. But I know you care."

"I do not care," Dennis scoffs. Lies.

"You're lying."

"I'm not lying."

"Why'd you call just to lie to me? Why don't you just wanna hear about Brian Jr.'s week at preschool and if I'm gonna be able to pay the electric on time?"

"I don't really want to hear about those things, either."

"But you still call. You said so yourself. If you didn't want this, you wouldn't call. Dennis, sweetie, you can't make these decisions and then get mad at their results."

"Shit." Dennis curses. "Shit, why _did _I call? I knew that, Mandy."

"No, you didn't. It surprises you every time."

"Who are you, huh? The world's leading expert on Dennis Reynolds?"

"No, 'cause that probably goes to Mac." Mandy laughs. Dennis's nails scramble at the Splenda packet. "But, yeah, you know, I lived with you, Dennis, for a whole year. And I tried to be good to you and to be your—partner, I guess, would be the word. So I got to know you. You'd probably say I studied you, or something." Another laugh. "And I learned a lot, I think. So, honey, you want to hear what I think?"

"No," Dennis says again. But he doesn't hang up.

"I think you got what you thought you wanted and you're mad 'cause it's not what you wanted after all. You need Mac, sweetie. You really do."

"Thank you, you dumb bitch," Dennis says. He hangs up the phone, rips the Splenda packet open with as much force as he can muster, and pours the granules down his throat. It tastes awful. It's stupid. But it burns.

Some dumb hick bitch from North Dakota cannot possibly have such a great read on him, he decides. He's spent forty years studying psychological theory and applying it to his life. He has a degree in it, for God's sake. He has dossiers. She's just reciting sayings off those trite memes from the Facebook mom groups that she's in. The ones with Minions on bright backgrounds talking about how they're the only competent person at their job, and how people take advantage of people who are too nice. (Of course they do, because those people are _stupid _and _ignorant _to the reality of the world, which is a sewer.)

He simmers with both his own thoughts and Mandy's words. Once again, he positions his body in the proper places and makes his mouth say the right words, and once again he feels distant, gone, and too attuned to the world around him. He and Mac don't speak of the fight from movie night. They don't, because they never do. Apologies are not a thing between this group unless somebody literally lands in the hospital or something equally drastic happens. Dennis is fine with that, prefers that, because apologies make him itchy and he thinks, as a whole, people scramble over themselves to please others too much, and it's not out of kindness but out of fear. If Mac apologized to him out of fear, it wouldn't mean a thing.

In the past, though, they maybe would have done something a little different. Dennis would give Mac an extra music day in the car, for example, or Mac would point out that he noticed Dennis was holding his neck weirdly and massage his shoulders, leaning over the back of their couch as to create a polite and comfortable barrier of plausible deniability. Now, though, they just fall back into this new normal, this new normal that Dennis resents. On the surface, nothing changes; below, Dennis's stomach and heart turn over and over again in these spasms of sick pain.

He eats less, less so than normal. He doesn't call Mandy the following Wednesday. He stays at the bar later. He tries his hand at picking up some twenty-something, gets rejected with a drink to the face from one of her friends, shouting the word _creep _at him. He goes to the gym and runs on the elliptical until the tangible ache of exercise replaces the intangible ache of abandonment.

"You look thin," Mac says to him one day when they're quietly eating breakfast and reading shit on their phone (in Dennis's case, articles on how to tell if you're having a midlife crisis.)

"Thank you," Dennis replies, curt as ever. He also feels like he might be about to burst into tears, a happy teenage girl when her boyfriend says something about her haircut, _you noticed!_

"No, I mean. Too thin." Mac's phone hits the table with a soft _clunk _and he frowns. "Remember when we went to the doctors and he told you that you were about to die, or something? Thin like that."

"My weight has not changed," Dennis lies. He's lost fifteen pounds. "Nor does it concern you."

Mac shrugs. "Suit yourself, bro."

The teary feeling comes back, though now more from frustration.

He closes out of all the midlife crisis articles on his phone, angles it away from Mac—who's not paying attention, laughing to himself at something on his screen and not even bothering to show it to Dennis—to search for therapists that accept his insurance, because if some dumb hick bitch from North Dakota who didn't even go to college and has the high ambition of one day becoming a manager at Applebee's can't figure out what the fuck is wrong with Dennis, then maybe a guy with a PhD can.

The therapist's office is in the nicer side of town, the area that Dennis grew up being more familiar with than the dredges of South Philly where he now lives. The man operates out of a tasteful and discrete converted house sandwiched between an antiques shop and a bakery. Quaint. Dennis's tastes do not lean towards the antique, but he appreciates the high price tags he spots through the window on the antique shop, and the vegan drinks that the bakery advertises on their chalkboard sign. Perhaps he will treat himself to one after this.

"Welcome," the receptionist says. He is, gratefully, the only person in the waiting room. "Please fill these forms out."

The usual shit about insurance and billing, and then a sheet asking for Dennis's medical and psychiatric history. His palms fill with sweat, his hold on the pen weakening, as he fills them out. Every instinct in his body screams at him to lie and hide and not check boxes for things like _high stress _and _skipping meals _and _history of addiction _and putting down the pills and diagnosis he'd received from that one guy those years ago. The whole thing would be useless if he did that, he reminds himself; he's doing this to prove Mandy wrong; he's doing this to prove himself wrong. He will walk into the room and sit on the couch and the therapist will tell him that no, he's not going crazy, that no, he's not having a crisis, that no, he's not in love with his best friend and just now realizing it at a time when it's far, far too late for reasons due to his own decisions and now he's going to live a life in the worst pain he's ever felt.

"Hello, Dennis," the therapist says, shaking his hand. The therapist's room is low-lit, with walls of dark wood, an Eames desk chair for the man to sit on and a black leather couch for Dennis. Dennis feels at ease at once, more like he's in a smoking lounge than a place that's about to perform a living autopsy on him. "You can call me Larry or Dr. Horowitz. Whichever you prefer."

"I'd rather not call you," Dennis says.

Dr. Larry Horowitz says nothing to that, just gestures for Dennis to sit down.

"So, tell me about yourself," he says as he himself takes the seat in the Eames chair. When he crosses his legs, his dress pants ride up and reveal a tasteful blue and green argyle sock.

"My name is Dennis Reynolds, I'm forty years old, I own and bartend at a bar." Dennis goes through the list of things he's supposed to name, these arbitrary descriptions that he's tacked onto himself. "I'm unmarried, but I do have one child. That I know of. And I believe this whole thing to be bullshit."

"Hm? What thing?"

"I mean, not therapy." Dennis laughs. "I studied psychology at school. There are some people that need therapy out there. My sister, for one. I do not."

"Then why did you come to a therapist, if not to seek therapy?"

"Because I have come to doubt certain things that I know to be true, and I would like to fix that. The same reason that one goes to the doctor for an infection: to remedy a temporary ill."

"Okay. What is it that you believe you need to fix?"

"Well." Dennis looks down at his hands. "I guess I should tell you the whole story, so you get an idea. I live with my best friend—his name is Mac, that'll be important—and I've lived with him for a while. Since I got out of college. A few years ago, my friends and I were on a plane, trying to beat the world record set by Wade Boggs for number of beers drank on a plane. My father—he's not really my father, but I was raised to think he was—bet me that I wouldn't be able to have sex on the plane. Well, I won the bet, banged some chick, but she then decided that I was her new boyfriend, and so I got off at the stop in North Dakota to avoid her."

"Wow."

"Yeah, whatever, I've gone to greater lengths. Anyway, while I was in North Dakota I met a woman at an airport Applebee's while waiting for my flight back to Philly. As is natural, I had sex with her, under a false name. I then returned to Philadelphia. A few years passed, and then she showed up with a son that she claimed was mine. I decided to return to North Dakota with her and try to raise my son. In the meantime, I should say, my roommate, Mac, came out as gay. He thought that the smart court of action was to pretend to be a couple and offer to raise my son _ourselves_. I did not go for that idea."

"I see."

"Are you going to interject those bullshit therapy comments? I don't need them, buddy."

"I'm sorry. I'll stay quiet until the end of your story."

"Thank you. As I was saying. I moved to North Dakota, where I stayed for a year. I hated it. Hated everything about it. Hated Mandy. At times, I even hated my son. I eventually decided to leave and come back to Philly. That was a little over a year ago. During this time, I began to call the woman—Mandy—once a week, just to see how things are going with her and Brian Jr., my son. Brian was the fake name I used. I didn't talk to Brian Jr. during these calls, as Mandy and I were both hoping he would forget about me. I would call Mandy on her way home from work, you see, and we would have a short conversation. Well, a few weeks ago, Mandy had stayed home because Brian was sick. He heard me talk to her on the phone and asked to speak with me. When we did, he asked me where his 'other father' was, at which point I learned that he thought _Mac _was his other father. As you know, children can form different ideas of family based on what they're exposed to." Dr. Larry Horowitz nods. "So, I thought nothing of it, at first. Then, after some reflection, I realized that—" Dennis clams up. He tries to talk, but finds that he can't make himself, that his jaw feels much the same way one does before one vomits. But he doesn't puke. He just sits there.

"Dennis?" Dr. Larry Horowitz tries. "You realized something?"

Dennis nods. He shuts and opens his mouth.

"Breathe," Larry says. "Breathe in, hold it, count to three, and then breathe out. Big breaths. Do this a few times, and then try to speak again."

With the usual kneejerk anger at authority thinking they know what's best for him, Dennis does that, and finds that it works. "I realized that I was upset," he says, pushing the words through his teeth, "because I felt like Mac had left me behind and no longer needed me."

"Okay. Now, I do think I need to hear a little bit more. Why would you feel that way?"

"Mac is in love with me," Dennis states plainly. "Or at least, I thought he was. See, I knew—we all knew—Mac was gay for a very long time before he came out. He's Catholic, repressed, daddy issues, anger issues, all that. An example of somebody who needs therapy. But ah." Dennis pauses. He wonders if he can get away without explaining how Dennis knew so certainly Mac was in love with him. "He was in love with me. It was obvious, really. How could he not be? You see me. I am an exemplary specimen of a human male, so of course Mac would love me. Or at least I thought. Yet he stopped making his passes at me. He has never inquired about what happened in North Dakota. When I brought the topic up the other day, he even claimed that he didn't think it was important to know because nothing changed."

When Dennis stops talking, his jaw feels tense again. He breathes. Larry seems to take this as an invitation to speak. "You feel like something has changed."

"I do," Dennis says. "I mean, for Christ's sake, it was _North Dakota_. It was awful. How could I have not changed?"

"How was it awful?"

"The people there." Dennis shudders. "The _house _I had to live in. That woman. Being a father. It was just—not for me. I hated it. I really did."

"I can see that," Larry says. He uncrosses one leg just to cross the other. "And you want to talk to Mac about that."

"Yes," Dennis says. "I thought he'd want to hear the horror stories, at least. Mac's like me." Dennis's heart seizes and his stomach lurches as he says it, so he hurries to clarify: "Born and raised in Philly his whole life."

"And this is the problem you feel you need to fix—this lack of communication?"

"No." Dennis shakes his head. "I knew for certain that Mac loved me and that I was the most important part in his life, you see? I know that. I know that the gang needs me to function. I know that. So why do I now doubt this? _That's _what I need to fix. It's driving me crazy and I do not want that."

"So, from what I gather," Larry says slowly, "you left Philadelphia and your friends here, in particular, Mac. You came back and you feel neglected because nobody has made a big deal out of your absence, again, especially Mac, because you thought he was in love with you."

"Right," Dennis affirms. "Mac needs me. He knows this, too. He's a bit of an idiot, he needs me to be able to say the words for him. We do movie nights every Tuesday. It just works."

"I understand that."

Dennis pinches his nose. "I'm not explaining myself correctly," he says, finally. "Look, Larry—I guess I'm going to call you _Larry_—Mac and I, we live together, alright? We always have and we always will. So he should _care _what happened to me, and I should be the most important to him, because he's the most important to me. It's one of the only relationships I have ever had in my life that work. It's unfortunate, because it's Mac, but it's true. We work together and I _need _that to remain true. There, I said it. Are you happy?"

"I'm sensing some hostility."

"Ha, ha, very funny. No more jokes."

"I'm not joking," Larry says. "Why would you direct this hostility at me? You've known me for—" he checks his watch— "eight minutes. I have barely said a thing. Yet you're accusing me of trying to get some secret knowledge from you."

"Because—" Dennis gapes. "You want me to say I'm not mad at you, I'm mad at myself. I read the books, too, Larry."

"Then you know it's true."

"I thought introductory meetings were supposed to be more broad."

"You were describing to me the problem you sought therapy for."

Dennis throws his hands up. "When Mac came out, I freaked out. I thought I wanted him to because he's Mac, you know? He's—whatever. I thought he'd be happier if he came out and stopped lying to himself. Problem was, that means he stopped lying to himself about being in loved with me. After a series of unfortunate events, we ended up spending a year sleeping in a king-sized bed with my sister and an old black man. Now, you see, Mac and I were on either side of my sister, and the old black man was at the end of the bed. The reasons for this situation are irrelevant. It occurred after a fire at our apartment, also irrelevant, but it did mean that we spent an extended period of time away from our apartment as it was rebuilt and living with my sister. When this sleeping situation ended and we moved back into our apartment, Mac made the assumption that we would share a room, as we had quote-unquote _gotten used _to our prior sleeping arrangements. I saw this for what it was, of course, which was a thinly-veiled come-on. I'm a professional in that area." Dennis laughs, because he knows he's supposed to at this point, but there's no humor in it. Larry does not laugh back. "Since he came out, Mac had made several passes at me in this manner. I thwarted his advances, of course. He started bringing men back to our apartment. Well and fine. But it's that it's like he doesn't need me anymore, no—worse than that, it's like he doesn't _want _me anymore. He's choosing other people over me for whatever he wants and needs. Men for sex instead of just jacking off to thoughts of me for three hours or whatever it was he would do in his room. He doesn't even check in with me anymore. Then my kid comes on the phone and refers to him as his other parent and I remember and realize all this shit, and now I _hurt, _Larry. I hurt very much."

"What hurts, Dennis?"

Dennis stares at him.

"It's important that you put this into words. Not only so I can help you, but just for yourself."

"I feel like Mac left me behind and I want him back," Dennis spits. "I want him to be in love with me—because—because I want him to be. Because I need him to be. It just doesn't work, _we _don't work, if he isn't, and this relationship is important to me. I don't know if I feel love like other people, Larry. I really don't. Love is hard and it hurts and I don't want it. I don't want a child. I married somebody, once, for a short time, I thought she was the love of my life, but I hated her. And you know what I did? I brought Mac back, I divorced Maureen, and everything went back to normal. I like that. I like normal. Not a big fan of change. Why mess with something good, you know? And what Mac and I had, it was _good_. I didn't have to think about it, you know. He was always there, and he was always what I needed, so why think about it? Why put words to it? Why bother? So, we need to go back to that. Because I want that, and I need that." Dennis pauses. He rubs at his jaw, and then he spits, "There. Are you happy? Mandy said that I left her for him. Ridiculous, right? She also said I got what I wanted, for Mac to stop hitting on me, but it turns out I didn't want it at all. And yes, before you said it, there's that _hostility_, Mr. I'm-So-Smart-I-Know-What-Projection-Is."

Larry raises his hands, palms out.

"In a way, I suppose I love him," Dennis admits. "In a way."

"That makes sense to me," Larry nods. "You keep choosing him, it sounds like.

"Right. So, you know, he needs to love me back. He has to. That's just what we _do_."

"Alright," Larry says. "But you feel like he doesn't, anymore."

"Right," Dennis agrees.

"And this bothers you."

"Correct."

"You seem to have it all figured out," Larry crosses his hands over a knee. "So why did you come here?"

"I want you to tell me I'm wrong," Dennis says. "That I've gotten myself confused about things I know are basic truths. Mac loves me, I _certainly _don't love him. I'm getting mixed up. He's still here. This isn't as big of a deal as I'm making it out to be."

"You just said you do love him."

"I'm confused," Dennis states, again. "Tell me I'm confused."

"I'm not going to do that, Dennis."

"Tell me I'm confused or I'm going to walk out that door." Dennis throws a thumb at said door.

Larry sighs. "Tell me some more about Mac."

Dennis raises his eyebrows, suspicious of whatever exercise this leads him into, but he also enjoys any chance he gets to discuss his theories about Mac. Mac is certainly interesting, but it's no fun explaining him to people that know him almost as well as Dennis does, and as the years go by, the circle of people with whom they spend time gets tighter and tighter. "Mac is a ridiculous human being," he announces confidentially. "For example, he believes he can do karate. He cannot actually do karate. He once literally shit his pants when confronted by a dangerous situation, despite claiming himself to be the 'sheriff' of our bar. He's the bouncer. I met him in high school, when he sold me weed. And get this—" Dennis starts laughing, genuinely, before he can get it out— "he only goes by Mac as a nickname. His real name is _Ronald McDonald. _Like the clown. Like the McDonald's clown!"

Larry laughs a little bit, then raises his eyebrows, too. "Seriously?"

"Yeah, his dad thought it was funny. And his dad, man. Real piece of work. In and out of prison, deals meth, that sort of thing." Dennis tries to keep his cool, but his throat and eyes are raw and his heart's beating a little bit too fast and his voice waivers. "Mac tries to be just like him, you know. Slicks his hair back and everything. He's so dumb, he can't see that his father could care less." Dennis narrows his eyes. "I heard—from my own father, who, as I said, is not really my father—that when Mac came out to his dad, he walked out on him. It was through an interpretative dance, apparently. Again, like I said, Mac is ridiculous."

Larry makes an _mmhmm _noise. "Is there anything you _like _about him?"

"Aw, man." Dennis shakes his head. "Of course. I live with the guy, by choice. I don't—I don't see how that's relevant."

"You claimed to be in love with him."

"I'm _confused_," Dennis reiterates. "How are you not getting this? I need you to tell me that I'm not in love with him, I actually hate him. He's ridiculous! I just like his attention. Tell me I just like his attention. Tell me nothing has changed. Tell me I'm confused."

The appointment goes around in these circles, more and more leading questions, until Larry _does _get Dennis to list what he likes about Mac. He also gets him, somehow, to talk about Frank, and about fathers, and come to the conclusion that maybe Mac is not displaying what Dennis wants him to because being walked out on is something he's gotten used to. Dennis accepts the theory, finds _that_, at least, easy to swallow. He does not find it as easy to swallow when Larry ends the session by telling Dennis that he has unrealistic expectations of how interpersonal relationships work, agrees with the former diagnosis of borderline personality disorder, and says to Dennis that the first step in solving a problem is always admitting you have it, but more than that, seeking help for it.

"I don't think you're confused," Larry says with five minutes left on the clock. "I think you've spent a lifetime ignoring that you are capable of being hurt and that a series of events—death by a thousand cuts, I believe you called it—brought you to a point where that hurt has come to the surface. Seeking therapy to deal with that hurt is the proper way of dealing with things, Dennis, and before you say it, yes, _you _made the decision for _yourself_, not to prove Mandy, or Mac, or God, or whomever, wrong. I would like for you to come back. I think we could do some good work. If you make that decision, please see Carrie, my receptionist, on your way out."

Dennis schedules his next appointment for Wednesday at 5PM.

He treats himself to a drink from the vegan bakery next door.

He drives his Range Rover to the fountain, and he sits by it, drinking his drink, watching people walk by. There's this cliché that you study psychology because you're really just trying to understand yourself. Dennis supposes that that may work for some people, but to Dennis, the mind of the other really _is _a mystery. He can, and he did, lock all of those little parts of himself away, stuff them down, hide them in boxes, and ignore them. He knows his own behavior, the ways he works, how his life should be. But other people, walking around with their drinks and their bags and hand-in-hand with their partners and their smiles and their laughs—or even their frowns and their tears—they _perplex _him. He wonders if they live in ignorance. He wonders if they live without consciousness. He wonders if they don't view themselves from a bird's eye, constantly aware of their occupation in space, the way they present themselves, how they interact with the world at large, like he does, constantly keeping himself in check and navigating around identified obstacles. He had been quick to dismiss all these other people as set dressing, unless he signaled them out for whatever reason—to scam or to fuck, normally.

Dennis feels like a protagonist in one of his and Mac's movies as he watches his fellow humans, his vision no longer seeing their bodies but their _souls_, taking the form of some sort of cosmic heat map. The mother with the twin infants in a double stroller, smiling up at the sky for no reason at all, one of her shoes coming untied, pushing the stroller back and forth, slowly, without meaning to. A goth young woman hunching her way with her hands shoved down in her hoodie. A gaggle of teenage boys on skateboards, calling out to each other by abbreviated versions of their last names, embodying potential just as much as Brian Jr., still. An old couple walking not hand-in-hand, but close enough together as if it hasn't occurred to them in years that they could be apart. These are _people_. Dennis _wants _to think of them all as stupid—stupid slut, having twins, can't handle them—stupid girl, thinking she's special because she's trying to hide her fat rolls with all that black—stupid boys, thinking they're going to go on and become great when in reality they're probably going to waste away smoking weed and drinking cheap beer and working dead-end cookie cutter jobs—stupid old couple, about to die having wasted their entire lives being with just one other stupid person. Maybe it's true. Maybe it is, but—the mother seems happy, the teenage girl clearly has something going on, the boys are enjoying the moment and each other, the couple point and laugh at some pigeons. Dennis is all of these people, Dennis is none of these people. He tries to blink away the visions of their souls. He tries to envision his own soul, and finds, still, just that empty hole inside. He knows he's special, but he's been trying to tell himself that he's special because he's _better_, when in reality, he might be special because he's _worse_.

He stands up and throws away his cup. The goth girl ha the right idea, he thinks. He wishes he had a hoodie to shove his hands down into and hide behind. Instead, he fixes the sleeves on his shirt and strides back to his car. Wednesday at 5. A new thing in place of his call with Mandy, and Larry and Mandy and Mac and Frank and God be damned, he's going to pretend that this wasn't a deliberate decision.

"Hey, Mac," Dennis starts, hating how close he sounds to Mac when Mac tries to bring something up in a roundabout way.

"Yeah?"

"I want to tell you about North Dakota."

"Okay," Mac says, giving Dennis a weird look.

It's a Sunday morning, so they're sitting on the couch half-watching some old true crime series on Netflix and nursing hangovers. Dennis has been in therapy for three weeks and feels, weirdly enough, tender. He's taken to wearing a lot of hoodies, drinking tea, and applying extra layers of undereye concealer. "I hated it," Dennis says.

"I figured." Mac smiles.

Dennis sighs. "It's not funny."

"Okay," Mac says again.

"I mean it. It's not funny. It wasn't a funny chapter in my life, okay? I really, really hated it. It was bad, Mac." Dennis closes his eyes, tries to will himself to say _something _deeper about it. "I felt like a failure," he settles on. "As a father. I felt like Frank." He thinks about sharing the apple story—he told Larry about and it seemed to horrify him, at least, and Dennis drew some satisfaction from that. Dennis decides against it, because he doesn't want to horrify Mac in that way, not now. He'd like to tell him about the hell known as children's birthday parties, but not about the trauma he shared with his son. He cracks an eye open and looks at Mac, waits for his response.

"Hey," Mac says. "At least you know you're a shitty father and got out of the kid's life. That's more than Frank ever did."

"Yeah," Dennis says, distantly. Larry has said as much, too. He doesn't say, _more than Luther ever did, too_, because he's trying to work _against _Mac's selfishness, not play into it. (Or—he doesn't want to bring up _Mac's _fatherly trauma.)

"But that's over, right? North Dakota? You don't have to worry about it anymore?"

"How can I _not _worry about the fact that I have a son, Mac?" Dennis looks at him.

"Family can be a choice." Mac nods sagely. "That's something that they say a lot, you know, in the gay community. Family is more than flesh and blood. Family is who you choose."

"I think that's different than my literal, actual son, whom I have an obligation to. I think that's more about, I don't know, kids whose parents kick them out because they're gay."

"Yeah," Mac says, hollowly.

Dennis backtracks. "Shit, I mean—that's great, that you feel that way—"

"Dennis," Mac cuts him off, staring at him. "It's fine, dude."

"It's _not _fine," Dennis says. "I hurt you."

"You hurt me all the time." Mac shrugs. "I accept that, you know?"

Dennis sighs. The fantasy scenario he'd constructed, where Mac melts and cries or something, proves different from reality, which he should have known. Mac is as dumb and oblivious forever. Dennis still can't bring himself to say the truth to himself, let alone to Mac, if the truth is what he thinks it is in the first place. "Did it hurt you when I left?" he tries.

"Yeah."

"Mac." Dennis says Mac's name very flatly, trying to show him how serious he is. He inches his foot towards Mac's, under their kitchen table, and knocks again it. "Please, Mac, I am _trying_ here. Tell me."

"What? That it hurt me? Yeah, Dennis, it hurt me. I couldn't believe you would just walk out on all this, walk out on me. Then again, what did I expect, you know? But you came back, and it's cool. It's chill. We're cool. We're chill. We're just sitting here, chilling."

"This is the last chill thing you could have said."

Mac stares at him. "You left a mental health line instead of your number."

"I thought it would help you?" Dennis tries. More softly: "Me, too."

"Yeah. You."

"I hated North Dakota," Dennis reiterates, "because _you _weren't there. Nobody was there, but _you _weren't there, Mac. You're my best friend. I know that now."

"Just now?"

Dennis throws his hands up. "Fuck it," he says.

Dennis stands in front of the sun and stares into it.

The heat hurts him. He keeps staring.

He asks Mac to dye his hair. He sits on one of their kitchen chairs with his head tipped back over the sink. Mac's fingers work on his scalp. Mac does an awful job. Dennis asks him to do it again two weeks later, and he does. Mac is nice when Mac is nice. He doesn't hate Dennis; he still loves him, maybe, but in an abstract, distant way, faded and passive. It feels active when Mac rinses Dennis's hair, water splashing down onto Dennis's shirt, and when Dennis pinches Mac's side to scold him, but also just to touch him.

Mac dyes his hair. Mac brings them snacks of peeled, cut apples and baby carrots with hummus and unbuttered popcorn to eat during their movie nights. If Dennis pushes, Mac responds: Dennis complains about his calves being sore when he comes home from an hour elliptical session and Mac says he knows how to massage the pain out, and Dennis believes him, and he props his legs up in Mac's lap and he feels the touch. Dennis can keep pushing and Mac will keep bending, as unquestionably as always.

It starts to feel normal again in these slow pushes, and Dennis is left wondering why normal no longer feels like enough.

A few weeks, maybe months, later, Mac sets up the Airbnb scheme and Dennis plays along with it, in more ways than one, because, yeah, he wants Mac to be happy. He wants Mac to be happy so they can both move on, move past it, not be mired in this middle ground and dancing around. If Dennis can't find the words, then Dennis has failed, and if Dennis has failed, he cannot face up to it. The world is bleak and Dennis thinks he might just actually end if he lets all that hurt in, if he keeps swallowing all that hurt, keeps _feeling _it like he does. As real as Mac's hands on his body, the feeling is, and they're one in the same, and there's somebody there without being there, somebody touching you without touching you, and getting to the place you need to be but being too late. Then the scheme ends, ends in total disaster as it always does, and then they look at each other afterwards, their heads tilted and asking questions, and Dennis walks up to Mac and throws an arm over his shoulder. "We just need each other, dude," he says, knocking their heads together, "nobody else," and he knows that Mac isn't going to get it, that he's setting them up to fail once again, but it feels more real, it feels more true, it feels more like the romantic comedy ending, maybe light on the comedy, and if Dennis's fingers linger on Mac's upper arms for a little too long and he allows Mac's hand to slide too low on his hip as they stand there and smile into empty space as if they're in front of a camera, and Dennis feels the heavy burden of possibility and responsibility for that possibility on his shoulder, than, at least Dennis feels it, and it doesn't hurt, even if it does hurt, because he's both forgotten and remembered, and it scares him, but for now Mac is there, beside him, _beside him_, distance bridged and wall climbed, body-to-body, as it should be.


End file.
